Category: New Labour

I wish I could have more hope with the upcoming General Election, Jeremy Corbyn is by far the most exciting leader in my lifetime, and although this should fill me with the same giddy excitement of a One Direction fan winning a VIP tour to Harry Styles’s dressing room, I feel utterly demoralized. For the older generation, replace One Direction with Take That and Harry Styles with Gary Barlow. For my Labour friends in my constituency, replace One Direction with the Beatles, and Harry Styles with Paul Mccartney.

Why should I feel gutted at the prospect of a General Election with one of the best leaders in my lifetime taking part? Because for the first time since joining the Labour party, my militant marching orders are to support Labour without a shred of critique, or a measure of cynicism. Do the Lib-Dems have any good ideas? No, no matter what policy they have, they are traitors, yellow Tories with no heart and a blood thirsty attitude towards poor people. How about the Greens, surely their lefty policies rub the right way with Labour supporters? Absolutely not, the Greens are crazy crusties with no hope of any power, and Caroline Lucas should really support Labour because we are right and she is wrong. This is literally the level we are at now. Corbyn’s hopeful “inclusive” politics, seems to only be inclusive if you’re part of Labour, otherwise you belong in Theresa May’s basement, eating the leftover crumbs of stolen primary school meals.

I grew up with Liberal Democrat parents, my mother as a councillor, and my father who is pretty much part of the woodwork which make up the foundations of the party. They worked closely with Paddy Ashdown during the Liberal Democrat renaissance of the 1990’s. My sister, a passionate scientist fighting for the environment, and tackling climate change, has worked with Caroline Lucas of the Greens. My mother and I have joined Labour, and are passionate about Jeremy Corbyn and his policies. If you heard any of us discuss politics around the dinner table, our differences in opinion are very subtle, nuanced and specific. We are all polar opposites to UKIP and the Conservative party. As are the parties actually policies if anyone bothers to actually check.

Here’s a few examples borrowed from each manifesto.

NHS

Labour:

“We will end health service privatisation and bring services into a secure, publicly-provided NHS. We will integrate the NHS and social care for older and disabled people, funding dignity across the board and ensure parity for mental health services.”

Lib-dems:

“The Liberal Democrats will put an end to these sweetheart deals, block PFI contracts, prevent privatisation of the NHS through the back door and increase NHS funding each year”

We need services that fit around people’s lives, not ones that force them to fit their lives around the care they need. We must move away from a fragmented system to an integrated service with more joined-up care.

Greens:

We will fight for a fair deal for those needing health care by opposing cuts, closures and privatisation and by demanding a full programme of locally accessible services.In particular, we will maintain the principle of a free NHS by implementing in England and Wales the scheme that provides free social care to the elderly in Scotland.

All these parties support the reinstatement of nurse’s bursaries.

So not much difference here, maybe some nuanced differences on funding, but essentially the same goal compare to the Tories; who want more privatisation, social care paid for by forcing people to sell their houses, along with UKIP who believe the NHS is a monolithic hangover of days gone by.

Then we look at domestic politics. Many lefty media outlets praised Labour’s manifesto as Keynesian, I wonder if they and Liberals understand that John Maynard Keynes was actually a Liberal? That investing in an economy in recession is how you grow the economy, rather than floating it on credit card debt? Well the Liberals have now clarified they would boost the economy with a major program of capital investment aimed at stimulating growth across the UK; Labour will take advantage of near- record low interest rates to create a National Transformation Fund that will invest £250 billion over ten years in upgrading our economy; and the Greens have stated “With scant evidence of the kind of strong recovery expected after previous post-war recessions, it’s time to admit that austerity in the UK has failed and that an alternative approach of significant investment to reduce the deficit is needed”

Obviously there are differences in how you invest in the economy between the progressive parties, but compare that to the Conservatives who are tripling private debt, decimating public services, and ramping up privatization in every corner of the country; why split each others votes in this election because of such trivial differences?

The Conservatives won just 24.3% of the population over last general election, why the hell do they deserve any kind of majority? If all the progressive parties had allied last election, they would have received 49% of the national vote. There is no guarantee that voters would switch, but why shouldn’t they? Considering the damage to the country done by this current slim Tory majority? And voters won’t switch on mass unless their supported party leads them that way.

What are the real dividing lines that stop a progressive alliance? For the Lib-Dems, it’s Labour’s position on Europe. Ironically for many in the Labour party the dividing lines in supporting Corbyn is his position on Europe. Personally, I’m immensely disappointed by Labour’s policy to accept Brexit for what it is, and given that Labour supporters voted 65% to remain, a significant majority in the party must, at some level, be feeling the same resentment. Tactically it hasn’t paid off either, losing a lot of Remain voters to other parties, and lots of Leave voters to the Conservatives. So what’s the point in pretending Labour want to accept the Brexit result, when it’s neither honest nor tactically useful. At least in a progressive alliance, many in the Labour party would feel quite comfortable compromising for another vote on a Brexit deal, or at least staying in the Single Market.

For us in Labour, I would press the Liberals to fully endorse an anti-austerity program. From my experience Liberals are far more radical than the public notice, it’s always the hierarchy who caution patience, a cowardly tactical ploy to always appear in a mythical center ground, defining themselves from the other parties instead of focusing on their own beliefs. I cannot understand why re-nationalizing natural monopolies is not just a socialist ideal, but always a liberal one? You cannot empower people without taking them out of poverty either, so the Liberals should be far more on board with an anti-austerity program. Again if Labour compromised on Europe, something the party naturally wants, surely the Liberals can compromise by backing up a strong investment package? Which the party naturally wants!?

Now for many politically active, pro-European, Liberal Lefties, such as myself, I feel completely at odds and impotent In doing anything in this election. This tribalism is completely toxic for all people involved. Politics should be about values, policies, principles and morals, It shouldn’t be treated as religious, as many left of the Conservatives are doing now. Yes Corbyn is fantastic, but so is Caroline Lucas, and Farron’s defense of internationalism, refugees and civil rights, is equally inspiring. Nicola Sturgeon is also one of the biggest thorns in the current Conservative government . I see all these people as great politicians, but I must only support one, otherwise I’m a traitor to my cause. Not because I am against the policies, but because I don’t don my red rosette and demonize all the other progressive political parties simply because they are not Labour.

If you are truly inclusive, accepting of diversity, and passionately democratic, you cannot put all your hopes for a progressive future in one party. Under Blair, Cameron and May, every MP received their marching orders. You do as your told, or face sitting on the backbenches for the rest of your term. How can you defend a system which is effectively a democratic dictatorship? At least in coalition, people had to work to convince each other to vote for policies. You didn’t just have to turn up, vote with the whip, claim your expenses and salary, then go home again. Bearing in mind that over two thirds of European countries have proportional systems and continuous coalitions, and a reminder for the socialists in this country, that Corbyn’s type of politics is most prevalent in European countries where there is proportional voting.

It’s far too late to ask candidates to withdraw, or have open talks with other parties. I ask as a passionate Labour supporter, to understand that by simply being in the Labour party doesn’t qualify you as morally superior, or politically more competent. That other progressive parties care as much about fixing social injustice and inequality as we do, with slightly different solutions to how to solve It. We can’t change what will happen this general election, but unless by some miracle we beat the Conservatives, we have to grow out of this primitive tribal politics, acknowledge the elephant in the room, and do something about the voting system if you care about the future of this country.

Post referendum, we’re stuck in the Land of Brexit Blues. Now more than ever we need moderate Conservatives to gain a heart, Labour to gain a brain and the Lib-Dems to gain some Courage, if we are to get out of the tornado that bought us here.

As 2016 comes to a close, I’m sure we can all agree, we’re in need of some respite and mind-numbing quantities of fattening food and alcohol, before the horrible day comes when we finally start the process of leaving the European Union; a bit like prison inmates being given whatever dish they like, before sitting in an electric chair. As I write this, and I can hear the whispered murmurs of Daily Express readers,“Remoaner, talking the country down!!”. Well whatever way you spin it, the economic and social development prospects of this country look about as appetizing as cat sick. Let’s look at the facts:
Drop in value of the pound wiped 1.5 trillion – yes trillion – pounds off of house hold income in the UK. Households in Turkey and Columbia fared better than we did.http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-3979306/Investors-struggle-grasp-effect-pound-s-fall-Brexit.html, investment

So off to the land of Brexit Blues we go, the good news is we managed to kill one wicked character on arrival; Mr Farage is now politically irrelevant, and after bemoaning foreign politicians taking part in the Brexit referendum, has taken it upon himself to make speeches for Donald Trump and be his diplomatic adviser. A note for the Americans, you’re welcome too him!

Now we take the first steps on the yellow brick road towards the Emerald city of the new Tory cabinet, whereupon we meet the mystic wizard, or in this case Boris Johnson our foreign secretary; who states he has a great plan for getting out of this Brexit situation, we’re just not allowed to know yet, and we should just trust him and his merry band of idiots for leading us on this path in the first place. In the story of the Wizard of Oz, the wizard turns out to be a fraud, just a simple old man. Well in this case Boris Johnson has definitely been not only a fraud, but a colossal buffoon who has endangered this country, simply to become the leader of the losing side in Brexit, and become Prime Minister. Boris has always been a life-long supporter of the EU, who saw a political chance, gambling with the future of our country, and is now busy insulting his way through every country he visits.

Back to our story, and our destiny as a county, first we need to topple the Wicked Witch of the West (Theresa May) who plots to steal our various worker’s rights.

Sadly there is no bucket of water to melt this witch in real life, we’ve already lost our privacy freedom with the Snoopers Charter, and post Article 50, be fully ready to lose further freedoms and human rights. Not only does Theresa May believe in watching our every move, cataloging internet browser history, but she has always wanted to deport foreigners to countries where they could be killed and tortured; Priti Patel (Secretary of State for International Development) wants to bring back hanging, and other forms of capital punishment; Liz Truss (Justice secretary) wants to restrict legal aid; Christ Grayling (Transport Secretary) wants a ban on giving prisoners books ( which has since been deemed unlawful by the High Court), Cut legal aid (by up to 30% in some cases, which led to the first ever barristers’ strike), Introduce a flat-fee court charge and back the choice of bed and breakfast owners to refuse gay couple patron. The rest of the party are dangerously worse.

With the far right holding the reins of the Tory party, the Conservatives continuously fearful of the UKIP threat and their compatriots on the Tory back-benchers, it’s time for moderates and the left to stop fighting each other, and sail us out of this Brexit mess.

Labour under Corbyn – the Tinman – need to start acting sensibly, they need to gain a brain. I’m extremely fond of Jeremy Corbyn, his unequivocal political philosophy is the most refreshing touch to politics I’ve seen for decades. The issue is that flat-out honesty is a very difficult position to take when you’re trying to win a general election. If you actually look at his policies they are very popular among-st the general public:

Increased funding for the NHS

Higher education grants

Re-nationalization of the public services

Building social housing

Rent caps

Increased tax on the wealthy, as well as challenging tax evasion.

Protection of human rights

Environmental business funding

Only 13% of the population believe austerity is a good idea, supporting the cuts; 22% believe that cuts should continue at a slower rate, and 45% believe directly in the policies of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, even if they don’t support the party.

An Independent investigation found that 75% of media sources in the UK are deliberately biased against Jeremy Corbyn. They rarely focus on anything of substance, more about how many gaffs they can find in a simply out-and-out, vehement, character assassination campaign. His passion for helping vulnerable people can also be a barrier to votes, with the general public having a fairly right wing approach to welfare, immigration and criminal punishment. Again a symptom of the rampant and deliberately dishonest right wing media; how many stories in the Daily Mail start with “ Benefit claimant with 8 kids has mansion” or some other crap.

But this isn’t why I think Corbyn’s Labour need to gain a brain; I simply want Corbyn’s team to recognize the need for a smarter dialogue with the media, and the general public. The team devoted to spin in his office consistently get this wrong; who can forget when Corbyn sat down on a train, because he couldn’t find a seat, not that he was lying, but the media then developed multiple stories discrediting, and in very few cases supporting, his integrity and honesty, and everyone missed the point he was making about re-nationalizing transport.

When talking about foreign dictators like Castro, despite the good work Castro did redistributing wealth, providing healthcare and education, he did brutally murder his opponents. Corbyn called murder his flaws as a dictator. Now if he HAS to have an opinion that he can’t help but tell the media, given the tendency of the media to conflate Corbyn as a communist, couldn’t he have led with “Castro was a dictator who is guilty of murdering his opponents” rather than open himself up to media scrutiny?

Now over Brexit, the only time they try to hide their true feelings – which are pro-European – to behave tactically ambivalent, they fundamentally get their strategy wrong. For one thing opinion has actually changed in this country over the Brexit referendum. 7% of the Leave vote regret their voting choice, and that number is getting bigger every day, as well as the number of young people now eligible to vote, if we were to run the referendum again – maybe with an honest campaign from LeaveEU this time – we would see at least 56% of the country voting to remain.

I’m not saying Labour need to come out and say we should hold another referendum, unfortunately that would be electoral suicide, but to comprehensively say “we need to stay in the Single Market” would be a good start. Something Corbyn and Mcdonnell haven’t been able to do.

Now the Scarecrow who needs a heart; the moderate, pro-European Conservatives. As much as I dislike the direction of the Conservative party, I have found it interesting learning about the few Tories who have genuine political philosophies, rather than simply a centuries old movement to benefit only rich people.

After the Tories have systematically ripped up the manufacturing industry over the last few decades, they created the country’s wealth by being a center for world trade, and apart from the disastrous connections with a toxic American banking sector, this was fundamentally a major source of wealth coming into our country. The ironic thing is that our unique position in the European Union was the foundation to our economy, if any country couldn’t afford to give up trade treaties, it’s actually us. This is in stark contrast to the Brexiters who make up 76% of the Tory base, and a 3rd of Conservative MPs. They, like their cousins in UKIP, hate the regulations on trade which protect worker’s rights and the environment and the freedom-of-movement for European citizens. The irony is we would be better prepared for Brexit if the Tories hadn’t destroyed our manufacturing base, and now it’s the same Tories who want us to leave the main source of our countries GDP.

The ideology of right-wing, hard-Brexit campaigners, is we will continue as a country, but we’ll force those at the bottom to work longer hours, with fewer rights, on low pay; for the benefit of corporations which will only stay in the country if they are offered extreme tax breaks. My appeal to the Tories, who don’t want to see the moral fabric of society burnt at the altar of destructive neo-liberalism, is too loudly call out the absolute lunacy of their back benches, and be an ever present thorn in the side of Theresa May. I know this is going on behind closed doors in Cabinet meetings, but bringing the flawed logic and lack of a Brexit plan to the public, would greatly increase the chances we have to save the country.

Last but not least, we have Tim ‘nice but dim’ Farron. The lion who needs courage. Now, many of the Lib-Dems I know will cry “he’s the only one firmly Pro-EU!”, but it’s not brave for the Lib-Dems to take this stance. They know full well that having public support of 9% in the polls, there is no risk in coming out as fully pro-European, making that their flagship policy. And I can’t necessarily blame them; this is a “smart” move unlike Labour. But for every other policy the Lib-Dems are incredibly silent, they know having any other views in media spotlight might hold them back, or distract from their main aim. The only issue I find is that Tim is focusing all his attacks on Labour, attempting to entice disillusioned Labour supporters to the Lib-Dem ranks. I find this very strange, considering Corbyn’s Labour share far more ‘Liberal’ values then the kind of Labour moderates who support ID cards, the Snoopers Charter, and the centralization of power.

The real issue is our voting system, which divides anyone left of the Tories, leaving the Tories a majority of MPs despite only having 25% of the population voting for them. Now I understand Labour’s faults in behaving tribally, but with 27% public approval, the time is right for the Lib-Dems to start forging a progressive alliance. Tim Farron once stated directly to me, that Corbyn was too toxic to form a coalition, yet hadn’t any ammunition as to why, other then I guess Farron’s weak servitude towards a biased right-wing press. If his excuse is Corbyn’s ambivalence towards the Single Market, what better policy would it be, in bringing the parties together, if remaining in the Single Market (and proportional representation) were the foundation to any agreements? Labour moderates would love it, and so would Corbyn’s base, which on the whole favor EU market access and a better voting system. Tim Farron would have to be brave enough to extend the hand of solidarity to Labour, and promote his party’s Liberal values proudly from the rooftops to show the parties distinction from Labour and everyone else, instead of burying them, hidden, in case of media scrutiny.

It’s time to wrestle back control of this country from the minority of right-wing nutters that are hell-bent in dragging our country back to the Victorian age, economically and socially. But it will take far more cooperation to get us back to the Britain we used to be proud of. Or…. we fight each other, risking staying in the land of Brexit Blues forever.

So Corbyn wins again, the chicken coup rebellion by 70% of MPs and 10 MEP’s failed miserably and Corbyn gained an even greater mandate than he did previously. Small clusters of MPs have been rebelling against him as soon as he approached Labour’s headquarters In London. No other Labour leader has faced the shear animosity Corbyn faced within the first few weeks of his election. If you combine that with the Independent’s study citing that 75% of media coverage has either deliberately misrepresented him, or simply waged a character assassination ignoring anything politically relevant – who can forget the stories about him not singing the national anthem, or not bowing low enough during a memorial service? – is there any wonder the members responded with stubborn resistance, which on rare occasions became aggressive?.

But to justify my opening statement, let’s look back to the reasons this country is in an economic and social mess; and I implore his critics to at least come up with some viable alternative policies, rather than repeat the same superficial abstract platitudes, that the right wing media uses.

Like most of my quibbles with Britain’s current predicaments, it seems that our most of my issues start with one person –cue the groans of Corbyn critics – yes you guessed it, Margaret Thatcher. The 1983 Big Bang was the start of a sudden deregulation of financial markets, coincidental (or not) with the same free market neo-liberal policy of deregulation by Ronald Reagan. Combined with the lack of state investment in any public infrastructure, Thatcher’s focus was to make London retain its place as the financial capital of the world, and thus make our economy entirely reliant on a financial services sector in London. The only issue is that these financial institutions opened the floodgates to foreign investment, and all independent building societies and separate merchant banks where absorbed by universal banks and investment banking units. The practice of the financial sector changed dramatically, rather than smaller institutions investing in highly strategized safe projects, these big high street banks and foreign companies started gambling at risk, in a monetized feeding frenzy. Blair and Brown continued this trend of deregulation, something Labour “moderates” and Mr Tim Farron should recognize before leaping to defend the previous Labour Government.

Ok so you’re already bored aren’t you? Trust me it gets far more complex, but the gist of it is basically that our financial services became internationally entwined with the US, and this paved the way to the 2007/8 global financial crash. Once bad and risky loans were being bundled with safe investments (Collateralized Debt Obligations) then bought and sold across the world, this eventually led to the mass repossession of homes and ultimately crashed the value of housing , and the backbone of financial shares across the world. The greed of high street bankers destroyed lives, the same lives which are being crushed under austerity, whilst the perpetrators of the crash are now wealthier than ever before. We bailed out our banks to the tune of 124 billion pounds in cash, and 333 billion pounds in the form of guarantees, where the Government will only provide cash if things go badly wrong.Now having read into this I could go on for hours about the implications of bailing out banks to this amount, because of the calamitous loans they themselves invested in. There are some atrocious stories about banks demanding to be privatized before paying back any money owed to the British government. Throw in a Brexit to this scenario and we go from a complex situation, to an all-around cluster-fuck, but that’s for another blog.

My point to all this is, why have we all bought into austerity as an excuse for a political strategy? especially considering that these cuts have hurt the most vulnerable in society and the Tories are in the process of systematically destroying the public services sector, all of which bear no responsibility for the greed and recklessness of the financial sector and the incompetence of previous governments. Tim Farron at the Liberal Democrat conference proclaimed that the Lib-Dems will become the official opposition as Labour is un-electable under Corbyn (fairly bold for a man leading a party with 8 MPs), and praised Tony Blair for his leadership, the man who not only led the way to further financial deregulation, but also introduced privatization into health, education, and that’s without mentioning the Iraq war.

Ironically, the talismanic, mystic and all round economic wizard Vince Cable – once favoured by the British public as being more competent with economics then Brown and Osborne – stated before the coalition the importance of investment over austerity as an economic policy. In fact one of history’s prominent economists (a lifelong member of the Liberal party) John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas led the revolution to modern day liberalism, stated the importance of saving in surplus and spending in recession. Yet during the coalition parliament Vince Cable changed his tune to support cuts to public services, excusing this attitude by blaming Labour’s previous economic policies, incidentally ignoring the fact that deregulation of the financial industry started with the Conservatives, his partners’ in coalition . To this day on the Liberal Democrat website, their economic policy is still to inflict “necessary” austerity. Since the coalition, Vince Cable has expressed regret at defending the Liberal Democrats approach to coalition in regards to the economy, it turns out he was locked out of negotiations by Clegg, Alexander and Laws. Not as united on policy as Lib-Dems would like you to believe.

And now on to the so called ‘moderate’ wing of the Labour party. I was never a fan of Miliband’s Labour, ironically because I thought they were useless in opposition, always abstaining on any progressive policy put forward by the coalition and failing to show any enthusiasm for changing the voting system, something that could have dramatically changed the following general election, and may have averted a Brexit situation. The problem with old ‘New’ Labour is their obsession with electability, and their belief that principles can, and should be left at the gate, if you want to get to the corridors of political power. This is fundamentally a toxic ideology, and why Blair should not be used as an example of a Labour party success story, given his close ties with the Murdoch media empire, and the neo-liberal policies which led to the recession and started the privatization of public assets.

And then after the slim majority win by David Cameron in 2015, with the crushed Lib-Dems and the meteoric rise of the SNP, acting leader Harriet Harman decided not to vote against the new welfare bill, restricting children’s tax credits, driving thousands of families into poverty. Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendell all advocated their limp leadership values based around an “austerity-lite” ideal, believing that what the public really need after consecutive years of public sector cuts, cuts to welfare, and pay freezes, is more public sector cuts, cuts to welfare, and pay freezes. All justified because both the Conservatives, then New Labour, messed with a global financial system, promoting greed at the expense of any egalitarian values.

And then we have Corbyn, the only leader advocating public investment, and harder regulations on the financial industry, the only leader (apart from Caroline Lucas of the Greens) who is anti-austerity. And this is painted as a mad, Trotskite/Communist belief by mainstream media, Labour moderates and Liberal Democrats? Don’t you think a little blame could go to the mad free market basket cases who caused the financial mess in the first place?

What’s worse is that Momentum and Corbyn supporters are now being demonized, vilified and misrepresented by the same self-righteous, facetious political pundits, whose only criticisms are superficial and sometimes simply based around gutter journalism. I understand skepticism from a self-serving Conservative, but anyone ‘Left’ of the Tories needs to actually have a little perspective, and stop treating us like idiots, and maybe, just maybe, talk about actual policies?.

The main criticism is that Jeremy Corbyn is un-electable, even if his critics can never fully explain why. My point all along is the now famous Jo Cox line “We have far more in common, than that which divides us”. If the Lib-Dems, and Labour moderates could focus more on their actual belief systems, go back to the drawing board and rediscover their own moral compasses again, rather than stick their finger in the wind to guess public opinion based around right wing media sources, then maybe they could see how many policies we have in common, especially in contrast to the Conservative party. Combine that with a pledge to change our voting system, and a focus on simply defeating the Tories in the interim, we could have real change in this country.

It’s time to stop the overt snobbery and contemptuous rhetoric against Corbyn. My plea to anyone left of the Conservative party is to start seeing who the real enemy is.